The Big Shift: Shifting Your B2B Marketing Strategy From Product First To People First

Puneet Chadha Oct 26, 2022

Cultural shifts are extremely interesting events, not just because they create avenues for new possibilities, but also because they open a window into the human consciousness. Often, these cultural shifts are make-or-break moments for brands. Aligning with these cultural changes is not enough. To succeed, brands need to break through cultural trends and race ahead.

Take the example of the powerful social media networks that exist today, and how they have redefined B2C Marketing. These networks are breeding grounds for new cultural shifts.

Since social media enables people to get together and talk about things that interest them instantaneously, it has created very powerful groups that have the ability to make or break brands.

This is often known as “Crowd Culture”, and brands that are able to align themselves with these subcultures often have a sizable advantage over competitors. From posting memes to hiring social media influencers for promoted posts, brands today are throwing the wrench at hacking this cultural code.

Today, we’re in the middle of a tectonic shift happening in B2B Marketing: Brands around the world are building strategies centered around people, not their products. Let’s take a look at what’s driving this shift, and how brands are adapting:

Rise of the Millennial B2B Decision Maker

Millennials are now the largest segment of decision-maker in the B2B space. This has not only changed the landscape of the typical B2B sales journey but also means that organisations have to adapt their marketing and branding strategies to connect with this new audience. Here are some ways in which millennials are different from other generations in their buying patterns:

● Millennials take significantly longer to come to decisions compared to other generations, which means brands must find different ways to keep them engaged across different channels, throughout their buying journeys

● Over 95 per cent of millennials today use some form of social media at work, and they are 20 per cent more likely to be influenced by social media when making a decision. This means that social media must play a pivotal role in a B2B brand’s marketing strategy.

● Millennials prefer digital channels and personalised experiences to discover products and interact with companies. Video is also the preferred medium of choice to learn and digest new information.

A “Social First” Brand Strategy Gartner estimates that B2B buyers only spend 17 per cent of their time meeting with potential suppliers when considering a purchase. With the vast majority of the time spent on digital channels - LinkedIn, Email threads, Slack groups, Zoom chats, etc. brands must find new ways to engage digitally native customers. Outside of leveraging social channels for engagement, B2B brands must also leverage different social channels for commerce.

Today, brands often leverage social media marketing in a way that’s at odds with how these platforms operate. The goal of any social media platform is to keep users on the platform, interacting with new and different things. Meanwhile, marketers try to get people off these social media platforms and redirect them to other channels.

Creating “Social First” content that is aligned with social media algorithms, for example, creating content that gets engagement and starts a conversation on these platforms, is a much more lucrative strategy for B2B Brands. This content can be repurposed later into other assets for different channels.

Adobe’s Instagram page is a great case study on how a B2B Software Brand is leveraging social media to connect with prospective customers. Not only does their content act as a source of inspiration for their followers, but they are also able to keep new followers engaged by periodically hosting contests and inviting users to submit their own content. The result is that Adobe’s Instagram page is followed by a whopping 1.4 million people - more than most consumer brands.

Rise of Digital Marketing Tools

Today, there are new opportunities to integrate marketing data with sales tools to create delightful customer experiences and obtain better data.

● CRM systems can track customer interactions across a variety of channels - physical meetings, emails, phone calls and customer support interactions. They can also track which websites a customer visits and what actions they take. This information can help a B2B business understand customer behaviour and improve customer experience.

● Strong landing pages are key. They act as an opening window to your product or service and a well-designed page can help increase your site’s conversion rate. According to Hubspot, businesses using optimisation software for their landing pages are able to increase conversion by 400 per cent

● The use of customer behaviour analytics to personalise marketing content is a secular trend. By leveraging data to understand customer preferences, businesses can deliver timely and tailored offers and content, through targeted campaigns, personalised product recommendations and customised web pages to their customers.

B2B Marketing is experiencing a tectonic shift, but brands around the world can use this as an opportunity, instead of a threat. However, to remain competitive in our digital reality, brands must minimise technology friction and adopt these frontier technologies first.